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The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test is a concept that was coined by Alison Bechdel in her comic “Dykes to Watch Out For” in 1985. What the test consists of is of analysing the female presence in a film following three simple steps: First, are there two (named) women in the film? Second, do these two female characters speak to each other? And finally, do they speak about something other than a man?

You would think that is an extremely and ridiculously easy thing to accomplish but it is actually not. What I particularly love about the Bechdel Test is that it is a very useful tool to point out the present problem of feminism (and by feminism I mean “equality between men and women”) in nowadays’ society. It is something extremely simple, something that surely happens daily in ‘real-life’ yet something that is difficult to achieve in the so-called representation of society through fiction. Because of the little amount of films being made today (especially in Hollywood) that pass this test, it is impossible to deny that we still live in a society ruled by an industry that continues to tell stories that are told and lived by men.

The Bechdel Test, however, is only an anecdote, an easy and fast way to point out a problem. It is true that at the end of the day such a simple test will not be able to deconstruct a film or to decipher what the film truly is about. A film may pass The Bechdel Test and still be incredibly problematic in its portrayal of its female characters, and a film may not pass such a test and still be able to portray a female character in an incredible and necessary way. But it is an interesting concept, because it points at Hollywood filmmakers, and it asks them about the kind of faked reality they are trying to build. It is a reality where women are barely in films as individuals, where there is little depth put into these characters. It is not a problem about the female presence in Hollywood, it is obvious that actresses get work, it is about the kind of characters that are being written, the kind of stories these characters are in.

What fascinates me the most about The Bechdel Test is that I am a absolutely sure that I have never known a woman that does not pass this test in her real life, on a daily basis. It therefore is not only extremely preoccupying but it seems completely surrealist to me that it seems impossible for the great majority of films produced and released every week, to not even have a scene that contains two women talking to each other for less than two minutes, in the average hour and forty-five minutes of duration of such films.

The stats at the official Bechdel Test website say that in their database they have 3479 films, out of which 1876 (53.9%) films pass the test completely (that is the three questions/steps). 386 (11.1%) of these films would pass two of the questions of the test, while 852 (24.5%) would pass one of the questions, and 365 (10.5%) films would not even have more than one woman in them. Taking into consideration that during 2012 and only in America 253 films were released, I’d say that doing the math, the problem is still present.

So, while it may have its faults, I am a great fan of The Bechdel Test, because I firmly believe society can be reformed through fiction, I firmly believe that the first step to reforming society, is reforming such fiction, and if our current fiction cannot even be a representative of our reality, I do not think things are looking particularly well for our future.

If you’re interested in reading more about the Bechdel test, visit the official website, which has a lot of useful information, as well as more statistics. You can also take a look at the video Feminist Frequency did, right here.